Right Angle began as a column in the now-defunct Sunday magazine in November 1991. The column allowed me the luxury of presenting an alternative to the prevailing left-liberal consensus in India. It has become the implicit signature tune for all my subsequent writings.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Last week, as one part of Assam burned, some TV channels were engaged in an utterly grotesque exercise: trying to ascertain whether the clashes were ‘communal’ or ‘ethnic’. The deliberations also had a definite sub-text. In the hierarchy of repugnance, a ‘communal’ riot was unacceptable while an ‘ethnic’ conflict was somehow understandable. In the political context this meant that while the 2002 riots in Gujarat were beyond the pale, the cleansing of communities from Kokrajhar and Dhubri were an outcome of a skewed historical process and, therefore, less damning.

Why the killing of people on account of their religion should count as a greater offence than the murder and dispossession of communities on account of their ethnicity remains a mystery to me. If the Gujarat Government is to be put in the dock for its failure to prevent the deaths of nearly a thousand citizens, why should the Assam Government’s failure to prevent the dispossession of more than a lakh people be construed as a lesser offence?

Clearly, a debate centred on competitive culpability is unlike to get us anywhere. No one seriously suggests that Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi sat back in Guwahati and let slip the dogs of war. The astute Gogoi, who is well versed in the art of competitive politics — examine the deftness with which he deprived the BJP of its Bengali Hindu vote in the Barak Valley in the 2011 Assembly election — knows what is permissible in democratic politics and what is not. Without necessarily exonerating him of the charge of administrative laxity in responding to the brewing troubles in Kokrajhar district, my guess is that he failed to anticipate that a tiny spark could lead to a prairie fire. He may have been guilty of misjudgement and tardiness but he did not plan last week’s violence.

Judging from his aggressive response to attacks on him by a clutch of MPs, particularly his suggestion that the Central forces took their own sweet time to arrive in the affected areas, I think that Gogoi is only too aware that a substantial section of Assam isn’t viewing the recent troubles through the prism of compassion alone. At the risk of over-statement, I would say that the more Gogoi is attacked by ‘outsiders’, the greater will be his popularity among the indigenous Assamese. The resemblance between his situation and that of another Chief Minister may well invite attention.

Cruel as it may sound, the dominant perception in Assam is that Kokrajhar, Dhubri and the other districts of the undivided Goalpara region were living on the edge, and that this was an explosion waiting to happen. That it happened as a consequence of four Bodo activists being butchered in May was an incidental detail. If not yesterday, the troubles would have happened tomorrow.

The extent to which last week’s clashes were a consequence of unattended problems has been spelt out by Election Commissioner MS Brahma (writing in his personal capacity) in Indian Express. Brahma has argued that the “present ethnic clashes between the two communities can be directly attributed to… illegal immigration into Assam.” The illegal migrants from Bangladesh have put pressure on land, livelihood and opportunities. More important, they have contributed to a significant demographic change. Brahma writes that “It has been acknowledged… that out of the 27 districts in Assam, 11 of them are going to be Muslim majority districts once the 2011 Census figures are published…”

The past decade has also seen this demographic change manifesting itself in politics. Till 2006, the Congress owed its success to what was called the Ali-Coolie-Bengali alliance. However, the rise of the UMFA under Badruddin Ajmal has led to a large-scale exodus of Muslim voters from the Congress, to the extent that in the present Assembly UMFA has greater representation than the AGP and BJP. Ajmal, who represents the Muslim-majority Dhubri in the Lok Sabha has mounted a spirited campaign for the abolition of the Bodo Tribal Council that controls land transfers and ownership in most of Kokrajhar. His assertion is that Bodos constitute only 27 per cent of the BTC area. Ajmal’s estimate may be exaggerated but it suggests that even the heartland of the Bodos has witnessed a staggering demographic shift which is provoking tension. Indeed, there are reports that the present clashes may witness a transfer of population: Bangladeshi Muslims to Dhubri, and Bodos to Kokrajhar.

In 2011, as UMFA grew more belligerent, Gogoi altered the social coalition behind the Congress. He successfully undercut both the AGP and BJP, hitherto seen as the main representatives of the Assamese in the Brahmaputra Valley and the Bengali Hindus in the Barak Valley. However, while he secured their electoral backing, the Chief Minister is yet to act on the disquiet of those who switched their vote to the Congress. The demands of the Bodos in Kokrajhar mirror the demands made by the rest of the indigenous Assamese peoples in other parts of the State. The demand to do ‘something’ about the demographic invasion of Assam is all pervasive.

Unfortunately, so skewed is the public discourse in the metropolitan centres of India that illegal immigration has become a fear that dare not speak its name. No wonder Assam nurtures a profound sense of alienation.

We need to speak about the issues behind the clashes, and not fall back on facile debates on whether the disturbances were communal or ethnic..

No discussion of history at the popular level is ever complete without the inevitable question: what if?

It is precisely this question that comes to mind on a small detail of the ceremony surrounding the advent of a new presidency in India. What if, it may well be asked, had Mahatma Gandhi not been felled by a bullet in 1948 and had gone on to witness India’s transition to a republic in 1950? What if a grateful nation in search of a moral compass had insisted that the ‘father of the nation’ should also be its first President? And what if the Mahatma had agreed?

In that event, would Jawaharlal Nehru have had the gumption to advise his mentor that wearing “a black achkan and white churidar pyjamas would be suitable for the inauguration ceremony as well as for any other official function”? Would the man who conversed with the mighty King-Emperor in Buckingham Palace in a dhoti and shawl have delighted the photographers by putting on something utterly incongruous? Would the ever-irreverent Sarojini Naidu have chuckled over a Mahatma in fancy dress?

The imagery of Gandhi in Nehruvian attire is deliciously wicked. However, behind the farce lurks a more profound question: does India need a dress code for ceremonial occasions? This was the question Dr Rajendra Prasad, the first President of the Republic, asked Nehru three days before he was sworn in. The first two occupants of the palace on Raisina Hill after Independence had, after all, assumed charge in markedly different clothes: Lord Mountbatten in the ceremonial uniform of an admiral of the fleet, and C Rajagopalachari in a white khadi jacket and dhoti.

Left to himself, Rajen Babu would have preferred a variant of what Rajaji wore to the Durbar Hall on becoming governor-general. Dhoti, in its different regional variations, was the preferred dress of most Indians for formal and ceremonial occasions. Some Muslim communities in northern and central India, however, preferred the long achkan or sherwani with white pyjamas. In short, there was no single definition of formal wear. Just as the Scots never gave up their kilts in clan colours for the regulation dinner jacket, India’s definition of ‘formal’ has differed according to culture and geography.

In West Bengal, the home state of India’s 13th President Pranab Mukherjee, the Calcutta Club has, for example, deemed that lounge suits and dhotis are acceptable for the dining room, while the kurta-pyjama (whether of the Fab India or political India variety) is a definite no-no. This is quite a contrast from the Delhi clubs where dhoti is taboo but pyjamas are accepted. Yet, there is a visceral antipathy of the Bengali bhadralok for the pyjama. A Bengali notable once rebuked Madhav Rao Scindia for coming to dinner in kurta-pyjama. “The pyjama,” he informed his bewildered guest, “is what you wear between the bedroom and the bathroom.”

It is worth considering what the custodians of Bengali taste thought of the new President, abandoning the customary dhoti and assuming office in a Nehru-decreed uniform. The last occasion a Bengali had occupied a post of equivalent importance was Subhas Bose, the Congress President in 1938. Predictably, Bose was impeccably attired in white dhoti-panjabi, with a striped angavastram for colour. This was quite a change from the 1928 Congress session in Calcutta when he turned up in military uniform, complete with steel-chain epaulettes. A bemused Gandhi compared Bose and his uniformed volunteers to a Bertram Mills Circus.

The Mahatma found Bose’s militaristic pretensions amusing. In the same vein, rooted Bengalis found Nehruvian aesthetics suspect and pretentious. Writing in 1965 in The Continent of Circe, the Bengali gadfly Nirad C Chaudhuri described Nehru as “more a Muslim than a Hindu, so far as he is anything Indian at all…He is usually repelled by anything pronouncedly Hindu.” Nehru’s critics noted the alacrity with which he shed the dhoti after 1947 for a sartorial style that epitomised the adaption of Hindu elites to a Muslim court.

That such a style finds favour with both North India and Bollywood is undeniable. But why make some people’s preference the norm for all Indians? It is time to liberate India from Nehru’s flights of whimsy.

Friday, July 27, 2012

The victory of Pranab Mukherjee in last Sunday’s
presidential election has triggered a bout of speculation over how he will
handle his new responsibilities. Unlike the distant past when the occupant of
Rashtrapati Bhavan was condemned to a largely ceremonial role owing to the
presence of a strong Prime Minister with a commanding majority in Parliament,
there is intense interest about how the President will conduct himself in the
event no single party or pre-election formation secures a majority in the next
general election.

The speculation is warranted. Despite the fact that
President Mukherjee has been a Congress loyalist for most of his political
life—apart from a two-year stint as the unsuccessful leader of a breakaway
formation, his selection as the UPA candidate was mired in some confusion and
uncertainty. There are grounds to believe that the selection of Mukherjee was
forced by the brief rebellion of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mamata Banerjee. It is
entirely possible that had the threat of former President APJ Abdul Kalam also
jumping into the fray not been there, either Hamid Ansari or Meira Kumar may
have ended up as the Congress’ choice. It is fair to assume that Mukherjee,
despite his high standing, suffered from a trust deficit with the UPA
Chairperson.

The reason for this wariness is said to be located
in the stand Mukherjee took in the immediate aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s
assassination in 1984. At that time Mukherjee proffered the view, based
entirely on his understanding of precedents, that President Zail Singh should
swear-in the senior-most member of the Cabinet as the interim Prime Minister.
In both 1964 and 1966, after the deaths of Jawaharlal Nehru, President
Radhakrishnan had administered the oath of office to Gulzari Lal Nanda. It was
after the funerals that the Congress Parliamentary Party met to elect their
leader.

To say that Mukherjee was guided by personal ambition
is a conjecture. Judging by his personality, particularly his obsessive
fascination with history and precedents, it is equally fair to argue that he
was merely trying to be correct. Looking back, it seems outrageous that an
ordinary General Secretary of the Congress, a person with no administrative
experience, was sworn-in as Prime Minister. Regardless of the fact that Rajiv
Gandhi was unanimously endorsed by the CLP subsequently, the question arises:
on what basis did Giani Zail Singh take his decision? By that logic, President
Mukherjee will be within his rights to appoint Congress General Secretary
Digvijay Singh as interim Prime Minister in the event of an unexpected vacancy
in Race Course Road. If that sounds preposterous, how can the President’s
decision in 1984 be justified? A break from convention cannot, after all, be
justified because the beneficiary is a member of a particular family.

What is clear from the extraordinary events of 1984—never
adequately scrutinised because of the extraordinary circumstances of Indira
Gandhi’s death—is that there are discretionary powers available in the hands of
the President to shape the course of politics. Because of special
circumstances, it is unlikely that there would have been a challenger to Rajiv
Gandhi for the top job. Nevertheless, the President’s decision presented the
CLP with a fait accompli. The MPs were left with just no other choice in the
matter.

In 1984, Pranab Mukherjee was extremely courageous
by putting propriety over reckless innovation. For this miscalculation he paid
a very heavy price. Yet, now that he no longer has to answer to the Congress’
first family, are his priorities going to be shaped by this sense of
correctness? The fear that President Mukherjee will not allow his personal
preferences to allow any Constitutional subterfuge has been uppermost in the
minds of those who see politics as the quest for power at all costs.

The problem, however, is that there are just too
many conflicting precedents. In 1989, 1991 and 1996, the President invited the
leader of the single-party to form the Government. In 1989, Rajiv Gandhi turned
down the offer because he did not command a majority. However, in 1996, Atal
Behari Vajpayee formed a Government despite not having a majority. The BJP
failed to muster the additional numbers in 13 days of office and the Government
fell.

As a result of the 1996 experience, President K.R.
Narayanan demanded to see letters of support from potential allies when he
invited Vajpayee (who was head of both the largest party and the largest
pre-poll alliance) in 1998. The President wanted to satisfy himself that the
new government was in a position to secure a majority. However, it was this
same principle that came in the way of Sonia Gandhi becoming Prime Minister in
1999. There is little doubt that had the Congress formed the government, its
natural resourcefulness would have enabled it to cobble together a majority.
Indeed, President Narayanan went beyond the call of office and actually tried
to persuade Mulayam to extend support—an
act which can be justified by the desire to avoid a second election a year
after the previous one. But it didn’t quite work out.

Of course, the
ultimate test of majority is in Parliament. But the President has a range of
options to choose from to determine who will have the first throw of the dice.
The next two years will witness endless star gazing to determine what he deems will
be most appropriate. The President’s discretionary powers are adding to the nervousness
in the political class.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Selecting the greatest Indian since the Mahatma was
always a daunting project in a pathologically argumentative country. But for
the organisers of this exercise, there were two particularly awkward moments and
both, predictably, were Bengali creations.

First, there was the legitimate query, as to why
Satyendra Nath Bose, after whom the ‘boson’ of the Higgs boson or “God particle”
derives its name, was not considered. Secondly, there was the inevitable
question: why has Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose been omitted? The organisers could
hardly respond that Netaji died in 1945 in an air-crash because that would have
resurrected the controversy over his death—a controversy not lacking in conspiracy
theories.

Strange as it may appear to outsiders, a huge
section of Bengalis are inclined to view the history of the past 100 years as a
monumental conspiracy by first, the British, and then a Delhi-centric political
class, to deny them recognition and justice. This colourful saga of unending
victimhood that has created a permanently aggrieved people, personified by is
the mercurial Mamata Banerjee.

When the diminutive Pranab Mukherjee, dressed hopefully
in his hallmark dhoti rather than an incongruous achkan-churidar, takes his
oath of office on Wednesday morning, will the Bengali sense of hurt be
assuaged? Will the first Bengali in Rashtrapati Bhavan be seen as the Congress
Party’s atonement for Subhas Bose’s removal as Congress President by a wily
Mahatma Gandhi in 1939? That incidentally was the last occasion a Bengali made
it to the very top.

There are few reasons to believe that Bengalis will
melt in gratitude at being finally offered this ceremonial lollipop. In an
interview last month on TV, Mamata was asked about her views of Pranab—a “son
of Bengal”—as the next President of India. “Son of Bengal?” she asked
incredulously, “He is a son of the world.”

The message couldn’t have been clearer. To the rest
of India, Pranab Babu with his unmistakable Bengali accent may be the
quintessential bhadrolok. In a cultural sense he undoubtedly is. Politically,
however, his roots have never been in state politics but in Lutyens’ Delhi.
Ethnically he is a Bengali but politically he is a man of the Centre.

To Bengal this matters. The tallest Congress leader
of Bengal was, by a long shot, Dr B.C. Roy who was Chief Minister from 1948 to
1962. His fame stemmed not only from his legendary skills as a medical doctor
or his no-nonsense style. Dr Roy is regarded as the man who gave West Bengal
whatever little post-Independence economic development it experienced. From the
steel plant in Durgapur, the barrage in Farakka and the development of Salt
Lake, most of the public investment in Bengal is attributed to Dr Roy.

The only person who came close to the legendary
Chief Minister was A.B.A. Ghani Khan Choudhury who, as Railways Minister,
nurtured the development of his home district of Malda. The reputation of Barkat Da, as he was
affectionately called, has invariably been juxtaposed with that of Pranab
Babu—and the results have not been edifying for India’s President-designate.

Politically, Mukherjee was always of greater
significance than the portly patriarch from Malda. Yet, it has been suggested
that he didn’t leverage his enormous clout at the Centre to do anything special
for Bengal. In a phoney war between a proud people and a heartless imperial
authority, Mukherjee has often been painted as a collaborator.

The dominant
intellectual current in Bengal has never been separatist. Despite the endless
of charges of discrimination by the Centre, Bengalis haven’t even considered a
future outside India. Yet, ironically, the folk heroes of Bengal have invariably
been upholders of local pride. Chittaranjan Das and Bose were hero worshipped
for their sacrifice and, above all, their opposition to Gandhi; Dr Roy was
admired because he kept Nehru (who he addressed as Jawaharlal) at an arm’s
length; Jyoti Basu earned respect for being culturally detached from the Hindi
heartland; and Mamata is indulged because she doesn’t care a fig for authority.
By contrast, Pranab Mukherjee has got
where he is by playing by the rules set by lesser beings in Delhi. In Bengal,
that makes him an oddball.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

With the London Olympics beginning next week, it is hardly surprising that sporting terms have acquired currency, even in politics.

The buzzword these days is ‘cornered’ and everyone is suddenly getting ‘cornered’. The NDA was ‘cornered’ when APJ Abdul Kalam decided not to contest the presidential election and the Shiv Sena and Janata Dal (United) broke ranks. The pugnacious Mamata Banerjee was well and truly ‘cornered’ when she grudgingly endorsed Pranab Mukherjee’s candidature. And on Friday evening, I heard a venerable editor say with astonishing certainty that Sharad Pawar had unfurled the banner of revolt because he too had been ‘cornered’ by the Congress.

To be fair, the cornering of Pawar and his Nationalist Congress Party was entirely unanticipated. After the so-called cornering of Mamata, it had become conventional wisdom that a resurgent Congress was all set for a show of cornering. The much-delayed economic reforms were set to be back on track despite the underperforming monsoon, Hamid Ansari’s re-election as Vice President was expected to be smooth sailing and Rahul Gandhi had given his in-principle approval to the orchestrated clamour that he abandon his ‘cameo role’ for some sustained political engagement. In short, happy days were back again and it was thumbs-up for the Congress and UPA.

So why did Pawar choose this most inopportune of moments to show that he wasn’t a circus ka sher (a description accorded to him in the mid-1990s)? Surely a seasoned politician like him wasn’t going to walk out of the Government because he didn’t like the new seating arrangements in the Cabinet room?

If whispers from the top echelons of the Congress in Maharashtra are any guide, Pawar was feeling ‘cornered’ because of a monumental irrigation scam involving NCP Ministers and the kerfuffle over the involvement of Chaggan Bhujbal’s relatives in the construction of the Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi. Both these scams, it was said, were on the verge of becoming public and a ‘cornered’ Pawar imagined he had no alternative but to threaten a walkout. Since coalition dharma has come to mean the right of every party to make their pile without fear or inhibition, the NCP chose to assert his political right. After all, or so the grapevine has it, wasn’t that at the centre of the midnight deal the Samajwadi Party chief negotiated with the Congress when he left Mamata high and dry?

More to the point, why should Pawar have felt ‘cornered’? True, he has merely 9 MPs in the Lok Sabha. But Ajit Singh, the newest entrant to the UPA Government, has only 4 MPs. This insignificant number hasn’t prevented the RLD’s trapeze artiste from dispensing with the services of a man who was proving to be a ‘difficult’ Director General of Civil Aviation. Nor has it prevented the mysterious loss of a noting that sought an inquiry into the safety standards of a beleaguered private airline.

Ajit Singh doesn’t seem to feel cornered by the media outrage, and neither is the Congress shamefaced about the possible shenanigans of its small ally. Why, therefore, should Pawar feel ‘cornered’ by the purposeful appearance of two scams in Maharashtra? Is the Congress feeling ‘cornered’ and flaunting a red face because sensitive defence procurement files by the kilo load have been shown to have been passed on to an arms dealer whose qualification in life is that his father coined Indira Gandhi’s famous comeback slogan in 1980?

The significant feature of these strange goings-on and cornerings is that the Government has lost all sense of the one thing that keeps democracy and civilised governance ticking — the sense of shame. There is no shame attached to the complete subversion of the CBI — so much so that most of the Twitterpostings after Pawar announced his revolt were centred on the imminent arrival of the CBI on the NCP leader’s doorstep. There is no loss of face for the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission — a man with a reputation for being one of India’s foremost modernisers — as he doles out money to States on the strength of political calculations.

Politics within the UPA has touched the heights of cynicism, and Pawar need not fear if the Congress wishes to sully his reputation with charges both true and imaginary. That is because he appears to have realised something that the crisis managers of the Congress seem blissfully unaware of: that prolonged association with the Government is yielding diminishing returns.

Walking out of the Cabinet and the Government may seem a risky proposition if a turnaround was in sight. Pawar may yet settle for a patchwork compromise that safeguards his interests in Maharashtra and, perhaps, even leads to the removal of Prithviraj Chavan as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra. After all, it is not mere the NCP but builder lobbies linked to Congress leaders who are baying for the CMs blood. But that would be tantamount to a short-term truce. In the long-run, Pawar can only be enthused by the example of Jagan Mohan Reddy who has taken on the Congress and kept his political clout intact by going directly to the people and stirring up regional sentiment.

With the BJP still unable to take full advantage of the anti-incumbency against the UPA, there is still a vast constituency that can be mobilised for a Federal Front which will have a say in 2014. Pawar, it would seem, is indicating his preference for that game.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

It has been a great fortnight for xenophobes and the
champions of ‘Fortress India’. First there was the much-discussed Time magazine
dubbing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh an ‘underachiever’, a description that
produced bouts of hysterical over-reaction from the Congress Party. Then there
was the bitter complaint by the Prime Minister of Singapore over the uncertain
business environment in India—an observation that was greeted in embarrassed
silence since the small city state can hardly be accused on nurturing a
sinister political agenda. And finally there was President Barack Obama’s
interview to the Press Trust of India over the obstacles in the path of foreign
direct investment in India. Although what President Obama said was nothing that
hadn’t been said inside the country by Indians, it led to a bipartisan
assertion of Indian sovereignty. ‘We will do what suits us’ was the refrain of
a political class that falls back on flag waving when expedient.

Amid this mood of prickliness that has engulfed a
part of Lutyens’ Delhi ever since ratings agencies such as Standard &
Poor’s began expressing doubts over the efficacy of the India story, it is
heartening that there is some good news for the beleaguered nationalists.
Ironically, it has come from a part of the world that does not figure very high
in the Indian perception of the world. In its report Beyond the Lost Decade released earlier this week, a taskforce of
the Australia India Institute of the University of Melbourne has spelt out
concrete steps that both New Delhi and Canberra can take to make the bilateral
relationship more meaningful.

The specific recommendations set out in this
extremely lucid and erudite report—reading it was a pleasure—on issues such as
business, immigration and the inner workings of the under-staffed Ministry of
External Affairs will, hopefully, receive the necessary attention in both
countries. However, what fascinated me were some of the intriguing observations
made by the report (a joint effort of three Indians and three Australians) on
the role of cricket in shaping perceptions of Australia in India.

It would hardly be an exaggeration to suggest that
if Australia figures in India’s popular imagination, it is due to cricket. For
most Indians, Australia is the land of Sir Donald Bradman, Richie Benaud, Steve
Waugh, Shane Warne and even the much misunderstood Greg Chappell. Melbourne
figures in the consciousness of Indian decision-makers not because of some brawls
involving dodgy students but because of the Boxing Day test at the legendary Melbourne
Cricket Ground. For Australians too and more so after the centre of the cricket
economy shifted from London to Mumbai in the mid-1990s, the few times India
figures on the radar are because of cricket.

In a revealing analysis of the Sydney Morning Herald between Sptember 2010 and August 2011, the
report discovered that out of the 405 published stories on an India-related
theme, 170 were on cricket—followed by (quite reassuringly) 100 stories on
business. There were also 36 news items on geopolitics and only 9 on Indian
politics. This is hardly surprising. A poll in parts of the erstwhile Soviet
Union would have revealed that India is invariably equated with Raj Kapoor.
Such are the vagaries of what is now glorified as ‘soft power’.

The Australia India Institute has recognised the
importance of cricket in conferring on Australia “a name recognition that is
astonishing in a country and a subcontinent most of whose 1.2 billion people
are remarkably self-absorbed, with only a fleeting interest in the rest of the
planet…(That its) top cricketers were Australia’s most identifiable faces in
India was acknowledged as an opportunity in this narrow context.” At the same
time, the report argues that the disproportionate importance attached to
cricket has reinforced stereotypes of an Australia that has changed
dramatically since the ‘white Australia’ policy was abandoned in 1973.

The reason given is curious: “As it happens,
(India’s) window to Australia is the one Australian national institution that
is the least multicultural and most prone to promoting an older, even outdated
idea of the country: its cricket team. With few exceptions, Australian cricket
remains largely an Anglo-Celtic preserve. When Indians superimpose the idea of
the cricket team on the rest of Australia, they obviously see a very different
country and society from the one that Australians themselves see, live and
experience.” Consequently, the argument goes, “there is an instinctive
uncertainty among the Indian establishment as to where Australia fits in Asia.”

If the objective behind this indictment of a
traditional and time-tested relationship was to argue for a cricket-plus
approach, it would be understandable. However, the problem with positing a
theory rooted in contemporary academic fashion is that it ignores the fact that
Indians, and least of all the Indian establishment, isn’t innately
uncomfortable whites, as long as their whiteness isn’t complicated by cultural
condescension. India, for example, has the best of relations with South Africa,
another cricketing nation where the game is still set in the social mould of
the apartheid years. Will that relationship be significantly enhanced if there
were more blacks and Asians representing the South Africa Test side? Are
Indians prone to viewing a Shane Warne or a Jacques Kallis with suspicion at
the IPL matches because they are white?

Take the United Kingdom, with which India has had an
enduring but historically over-burdened relationship. Why is it that Indian
visitors to London—and their numbers keep multiplying each year—still prefer a
visit to Buckingham Palace to a wander down Brick Lane? Why does the England of
Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse and Downton Abbey continue to fascinate
English-speaking Indians? That England is old, class-ridden, exclusionary and
on the retreat. But has the notion of Cool Britannia that the post-Thatcher
generation has promoted so assiduously made the prospect of the ‘enhanced
partnership’ more appealing? Or, are the two countries not assessing bilateral
relationships through the prism of self-interest?

Even a casual visitor to Melbourne and Sydney will
realise that the stereotype of white Australia does not hold any longer. However,
does the prevailing multiculturalism of Australia by itself enhance its
attractiveness to India? The answer is mixed. Rigid social attitudes,
especially those accompanied by a wariness of the foreigner, are a deterrent to
good relations, both business and diplomatic. However, a diverse society by
itself is of no incremental benefit. India is an open society which is socially
conservative and, often, closed. But this has little bearing on its worth as a
strategic or commercial partner.

There are many compelling reasons why Australia and
India need to discover each other purposefully. Cricket and the English
language are worthwhile foundations for the mutual exploration process to
proceed. But in the long run, there are larger questions. Does India seek a
worthwhile role in the Indian Ocean and is it willing to invest in it? How does
Australia balance its business relationship with China with the yearning for a
strategic relationship with India? How much is Indian business willing to
invest in the natural resources of Australia? Can India provide a market for
Australia’s farm and dairy sector? These are issues on which the future of
Australia-India relations will hinge.

The role of people of
Indian origin who have made Australia their home is a small, yet important,
factor in the relationship. But whereas the diaspora has an understandable
interest in demolishing the last vestiges of Sir Robert Menzies’ legacy, and
even changing the demographic composition of the Australian cricket team, these
are of little interest to India.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

When I joined St Stephen’s College as a fresher
exactly 40 years ago, we were subjected to certain rites of initiation. In the
main these consisted of imbibing lewd songs—the exposure of mollycoddled public
school boys to a crude, real world. One of these was a parody of the well-known
patriotic song of the 1950s: “Aao bachcho tumhe dikhaye jhankee Hindustan kee.”.

The verses of this ribald variation of Pradeep’s
legendary offering to a newly-independent nation hardly bear repetition. What
was interesting, however, was the chorus. Instead of Vande Mataram, the
genuflection to the motherland, the salacious version had inserted an
invocation to the loin of Dara Singh, often with the added garnishing, “Jai,
Jai Hindustan”.

Despite the obvious crudities of the exercise, the
allusion to India’s Rustom-e-Hind was fitting. Till the macho heroes of an
increasingly glitzy Bollywood began dominating popular culture, Dara Singh was
more than a pehelwan who also starred in films: he was the personification of
rustic, home-grown manliness. Like Milkha Singh the ‘flying Sikh’ who was
synonymous with speed, Dara Singh became a generic term for strength. In mythology
there was Hanuman and Bheem; in the contemporary world there was Dara Singh. To
an India suffering from a deficiency of national power, the wrestling champion
from Punjab personified muscular nationalism and associated saintliness.

This may not have been easily apparent to the cosmopolitan
elite that gave the early films of Dara Singh—with evocative titles such as
‘Trip to Moon’ and ‘Tarzan comes to Delhi’—a very wide berth. However, to
audiences in villages and small towns, both unfamiliar and suspicious of the
trappings of secular modernity, the B-films screened in the rundown cinema hall
next to the railway station, were the logical extension of the bioscope and the
mela on festival days.

Viewed from a 21st century perspective,
the early Dara Singh films were farcical, almost in the genre of a Monty Python
skit. In ‘Tarzan comes to Delhi’, where Helen performs one of her early item
numbers, Dara Singh is seen swinging all the way from Qutub Minar and landing
on the ramparts of Red Fort. In ‘Trip to Moon’, made just two years before Neil
Armstrong took a big step for mankind, the moon-based astronauts are shown with
basic crash helmets and Converse All-stars (which was known to Indians those
days as hockey boots). The robots under the control of the villain looked
strangely like metallic variants of Rajasthani puppets.

The film-makers, it would seem, were always anxious
to link fantasy with something familiar. The fight scenes invariably involved
Dara and another pehelwan and were attempts to re-create the magic of real-life
exhibition wrestling matches (attended by crowds of over 10,000). Therefore,
instead of the dhishum-dhishum that
became the hallmark of films after the 1970s, there was much thigh slapping and
grappling. The bush telegraph had created a legend out of Dara Singh’s
encounters with King Kong, as the Hungarian-born giant Emile Czaja was
popularly known, and the fights on the screen became old-fashioned wrestling
matches for tamasha-hungry people.

Of course, there was the inevitable touch of the
absurd. In ‘Trip to Moon’, after Dara had resoundingly knocked out the bad
pehelwan and rescued the heroine clad in an incongruous ball gown, the villain
unleashes his final weapon: a rhinoceros who staggers dopily on to the screen
before being felled by the Rustom-e-Punjab.

Like the shows of
strength in the mud pits of akharas, Dara Singh gave Bharat countless hours of
wholesome entertainment. But he was more than just another popular performer.
Much before he was exposed to a new generation as the Hanuman in Ramanand
Sagar’s Ramayan, Dara Singh had already, in the popular imagination at least,
become a force for the good. He may have played opposite buxom actresses and
even appeared faintly romantic, but the values with which he was associated
were distinctly traditional: strength of body, nobility of mind, commitment to
country and respectful of the Gods. In an India that fought three wars in just
nine years, Dara Singh epitomised the folk craving for both strength and
goodness against the perfidious. He was more than just a star: he was a
phenomenon.

There is, it would seem, no place for gratitude in
politics. It took the presiding deities of UPA-2 less than 48 hours after he
left office to start the whisper that the ills of the economy are due to the
man who will be the next President of India. For Pranab Mukherjee, the
unkindest cut was the fact that the new revisionism seemed to be emanating from
people close to the Prime Minister—a man whose job he saved on a number of
occasions through his fire-fighting abilities.

Not that the calumny heaped on the outgoing Finance
Minister is entirely unwarranted. Mukherjee didn’t trigger the economic
downturn that is now contributing to the Government’s eroding popularity.
However, his Budget last May certainly hastened the larger erosion of
confidence in the India story.

Was Mukherjee, therefore, plain bloody-minded or
still dreaming of the halcyon days of Indira Gandhi when the Government
directed and capitalists bowed in submission? Alternatively, was Mukherjee the
archetypal pragmatist who believed that politics was the art of the possible?

The past record seems to suggest that Mukherjee
adjusted to the grim realities of coalition government far better than most
Congress leaders who still imagine they are in a one-party government. In
UPA-1, as External Affairs minister, he was berated for dragging his feet on
the Indo-US nuclear deal. It was then believed that he was just too dependent
on the CPI(M) to win his Lok Sabha seat. It was also suggested that he was too
stuck in old non-alignment ways to be enamoured of closer ties with the US.

Whatever the truth, Mukherjee always played
cautiously. I have always insisted that the over-arching philosophy behind this
year’s Budget was charmingly simple: to get it through the Lok Sabha without
too much fuss. He paid lip service to fiscal responsibility, genuflected at the
altar of the anti-corruption movement by promising GAAR, reiterated the
assurance of a Food Security Bill next year and waved the populist sword at
Vodafone. The Congress benches cheered, the private sector was muted in its
criticism and the Opposition didn’t quite find a specific issue to mobilise
opinion against the Government. Even Mamata Banerjee couldn’t find fault.

That the Budget was a monumental exercise in evasion
was undeniable. Yet, judging by the yardstick of political expediency, it was a
masterstroke and this is becoming apparent with each passing day.

For the past three weeks, there has been a frenzied
attempt by the PMO to suggest that the bad days are behind us, and that with
the PM at the helm the country can look forward to a bout of purposeful
reforms—the return of the proverbial “animal spirit”. ‘Just wait until
October’, the country is being told, presumably because the dust from the
presidential election and the monsoon session of Parliament would have settled.

Maybe we should wait until October to be told that
January 2013 will be more propitious because the Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat
elections will be over by then. Maybe we should wait for the next Budget in
February for big bang announcements that will set the Indian tiger roaring.

But maybe, and just maybe, it is entirely possible
that the PM is discovering to his cost that it is easier to talk reforms than
undertake them. Take the small example of the Forward Contract Regulating
Bill—permitting forward trading in specified agricultural commodities to ensure
better returns to farmers—that was supposed to have been cleared by the Cabinet
last Thursday. It was not even taken up for discussion because a Trinamool
Congress minister had sent a letter of objection. By this logic, neither the
Pensions Bill nor FDI in retail will be taken up because Mamata is opposed to
both.

What, therefore, happened to the promised purposefulness?
Why wait until Pranab Babu is ensconced in Rashtrapati Bhavan because the TMC
is, in any case, unlikely to vote for him?

With 20 Lok Sabha MPs, Mamata cannot be entirely
disregarded. But look at the alacrity with which Ajit Singh’s displeasure over
an extension to the Director-General of Civil Aviation was met. And the
Rashtriya Lok Dal has just four MPs and nowhere to go.

The reality which is gradually dawning is that the
UPA-2 is such a leaky ship that it dare not risk a bout of turbulence. Reforms
are not merely about getting more foreign direct investment and getting the
foreign funds to remain invested in the country. It is also about managing
government expenditure and lowering the quantum of subsidies. These involve
decisions that are potentially unpopular to both a venal political class and to
consumers, even if they contribute to the long-term good. Just look at the
proceedings of the National Advisory Council to see whether these priorities
are shared by Sonia Gandhi’s pet activists.

The over-politicised Planning Commission is trying
to help the PM out by doling out largesse to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the
hope of political returns. But put yourself in the shoes of Mulayam and Nitish
Kumar. What earthly political returns can accrue by being seen to be associated
with decisions that inflict short-term pain?

At the risk of
crediting Pranab Babu will too much foresight, it is possible he knew the state
of the wicket. Maybe the PM should tell his managers to temper expectations and
on his part focus on baby steps to restore India’s confidence in India.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid’s apparent
exasperation with Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi for the latter’s
failure to undertake his responsibilities as the de-facto Number Two became a
talking point in political circles this week.

Predictably, the focus was on the Congress heir
apparent for his rather casual approach to the crisis that has overwhelmed the
Congress Party and the UPA-2 Government. However, what was less noticed was
Khurshid’s parallel indictment of a Government in which he is a Cabinet
minister. In UPA-2, he said, “governance and politics have all got
intermingled. The political props have all got mixed up. It’s a scattered
situation.” Khurshid did not elaborate on the details of this dispersal. But he
said enough: “It’s not only economic reforms that have slowed down. Even
political and administrative reforms have not happened because of this
situation.” Translated into plain English, the minister was saying that UPA-2
was dysfunctional.

Coming as it did within a day of the Government
over-reacting to a Time magazine article
dubbing the Prime Minister an “under-achiever”, Khurshid’s comments added to
the overall Congress despondency with the prevailing state of politics.
Together, they also punctured the attempt by the Prime Minister’s Office to
suggest that the departure of Pranab Mukherjee from North Block has made the
Government more purposeful and set the stage for a bout of course-correcting reforms.

The attempt to talk up the economy and restore a
measure of confidence in a faltering economy was well-intentioned.
Unfortunately, they always lacked a substantial political basis. Observers
could not but gauge the fact that all the activity seemed to be centred on the
utterances of three individuals: Montek Singh Ahluwalia, C.Rangarajan and
Kaushik. There was a beeline of prominent industrialists who met Ahluwalia at
Yojana Bhavan; Rangarajan, in his capacity as the head of the Prime Minister’s
Economic Advisory Council, met a delegation from the Confederation of Indian
Industry who presented him with demands for interest rate cuts and a special
booster package for industry; and Kaushik Basu travelled to Kolkata to appeal
to the intractable Mamata Banerjee to support the opening-up of the retail
sector to foreign investment.

Two things were quite noticeable from these
meetings. First, the three individuals at the helm of the confidence-building
initiatives were all technocrats, uninvolved in the political decision-making
of UPA-2. Secondly, the pro-reform pep talk by the three eminent economists
wasn’t accompanied by any corresponding political initiative. Apart from Home
Minister P.Chidambaram who scored a self-goal with his gratuitous comments on
middle-class selfishness, none of the heavyweights of either the Congress Party
or its allies joined in the chorus. It almost seemed that economic reforms was
a special obsession of the Prime Minister and disconnected from politics.

Indeed, the past week also witnessed a meeting of
the National Advisory Council, the equivalent of Congress President Sonia
Gandhi’s Star Chamber. Had the NAC made noises supportive of economic reforms,
it would have been a tremendous boost to the self-confidence of the Prime
Minister and indicated that what was being argued by the economists also had
the backing of the social sector activists who are so dear to Sonia.
Unfortunately for him, the NAC didn’t deviate from its old script. To those in
Lutyens’ Delhi accustomed to reading tea leaves, the message was clear.

Khurshid spoke about governance and politics having
got intermingled. In a democracy that is inevitable. When he presented his
Budget last March at a time when the Government was looking distinctly fragile,
Pranab Mukherjee had one paramount objective: to ensure that the Finance Bill
was passed in the Lok Sabha without too much fuss. Mukherjee was, if nothing
else, a deft political manager who was aware of the Government’s limitations.
He, therefore, chose to gloss over the details of how subsidies could be
reduced without raising diesel and cooking gas prices. He was equally vague and
disingenuous about how the fiscal deficit was to be reduced.

Today, Mukherjee is being pilloried for his obduracy
on retrospective taxes and his insistence on GAAR—all indicative of a pre-1991
mindset of controls. There is no doubt that he is guilty as charged. But
India’s next President was also clear in his mind that he had very little elbow
room for reforms. In particular, he was aware that reducing government
expenditure was simply unacceptable to backbench MPs and to Sonia Gandhi who
has her heart set on the proposed Food Security Act. Mukherjee took the line of
least resistance and hoped that someone else would carry the can next year. No
wonder he was so anxious to take the short walk from North Block to Rashtrapati
Bhavan.

In trying to disentangle economics from politics,
the Prime Minister is trying to achieve the impossible. The harsh truth is that
there is no consensus either in the Congress, the UPA-2 or for that matter in
the rest of society over what exactly needs to be done to kick-start the
economy. Today, the problems have escalated to a point that neither foreign
investment in retail nor the Pensions Bill will put India back on track. On the
contrary, these moves are calculated to be contentious and trigger political
turmoil.

Governments can do what is needed in the first two
years of an administration. The election season normally begins after 36
months. Tragically, the UPA-2 lost the plot even before the midway stage.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Some 35 years ago, when I used to waste my leisure hours dabbling in the affairs of the students’ union in my college in London, we received news that a prominent Ethiopian alumnus of the institution had been arrested by the so-called radical Government in Addis Ababa. A small group of 50 students landed up in the Ethiopian Embassy in Kensington the next day to stage a protest.

After a short time, an official from the Embassy came to the group and said that the Ambassador would be pleased to meet a three-member delegation. Since it helped to have a Third World representative, I was among those ushered into the presence of the Ethiopian Ambassador.

The Ambassador, a charming man, shook hands, asked if we would like some tea or something stronger and seated us. Then, he turned to me. “Where are you from?” he asked. “India,” I replied.

“I thought so,” he said. And then, quite to the bewilderment of my English colleagues, he switched to Hindi. “I was educated in India you know,” he informed me. My fellow students said their piece and the Ambassador made routine but polite noises about conveying our feelings to his Government. Then, for the remaining 10 minutes or so, he engaged me in conversation about India and what was happening there.

I don’t know if that encounter made me popular among my colleagues. They probably imagined I was a softie who was easily charmed by a smooth-talking diplomat. That may well be true but it was my first real exposure to Indian ‘soft power’ (of course, the term hadn’t yet been coined).

I thought of the incident last week as I heard with horror the tragic tale of Yannick, the 23-year-old African student in Ludhiana who has been in coma since April 21, when he was beaten up with iron rods and stones and left for dead. His father is now in India pleading for justice.

If the Yannick case was an isolated one, it would have been possible to view it as an act of criminality rather than a racial assault. However, every month brings out a horror story of an African student harassed and persecuted by a society that is completely ill at ease and full of prejudices against people from different cultures. True, these indignities are not heaped exclusively against foreigners: people from the North-east are constant victims of prejudice.

The reasons why people react with suspicion and hostility to people they are not familiar with is a fit subject for social-psychologists. All I can say is that the wide prevalence of racial prejudice in the cities of India puts paid to the self-serving theory that white racism is a by-product of a bigoted mindset that has its roots in colonialism. The Indian student who was shot dead in a grim Manchester neighbourhood earlier this year by a hoodie who laughed as he pulled the trigger didn’t become the target because Clive conquered Bengal and Wellesley defeated Tipoo Sultan. The treatment of African students in India clearly shows that racial prejudice and historical memory have little to do with each other.

Why, to take another example, do young Caucasian women visiting India invariably complain of sexual harassment and worse? It is not because Indians are reliving some imaginary war of independence and paying memsahibs back for the segregated society the British Raj created. What we witness each day against both white women and Africans in India is loutish and criminal behaviour plain and simple. There is just no need to embellish criminality with complex historical and sociological explanations. More to the point, criminality persists because the police force is the repository of every regressive social attitude known to India.

After a number of Indian students were attacked and assaulted in Australia, particularly in Melbourne, the Australian Government woke up to the damaging consequences of the incidents. It set in motion a series of confidence-building measures that included more efficient policing and the closure of bucket shops that masqueraded as educational institutions. In India, the attacks on tourists and African students have been going on for some time. However, there is precious little evidence to suggest that the authorities have been sensitised to the problem. Indeed, if the media hadn’t publicised the case of Yannick, this unfortunate victim would have been lying in hospital forgotten.

For some years India has been gloating about the potential of its ‘soft power’. We have been patting ourselves on the back for the astonishing global reach of Bollywood and the penetration of Indian businesses into unchartered territories. These are undeniably real achievements. But ultimately the goodwill earned by a nation depends on the experience of real people. Britain, for example, rightly believes that its commerce depends largely on the goodwill it earned from those foreigners who lived and studied in the ‘green and pleasant land’. Can India hope to earn that respect from African students who return home with horror stories of people who are both inhospitable and hostile?

The Ethiopian Ambassador I met had been charmed by India. President Hamid Karzai, who studied in Shimla, has a soft corner for India because of his personal experiences. So for that matter does Aung San Suu Kyi. But will these experiences be replicated if the tale of Yannick becomes the norm?

Thursday, July 05, 2012

The mere mention of Narendra Modi evokes
controversy. To his admirers, the Chief Minister of Gujarat is the type of
no-nonsense leader India needs at this juncture. Decisive, single-mindedly
purposeful, hugely popular in his state and with an uncontested reputation for
honesty and personal integrity, he is seen as the leader who has steered
Gujarat in the direction of efficient growth. To his detractors, Modi’s style
of leadership is authoritarian, divisive and unsuited to a complex and diverse
country such as India.

The debate over Modi and his style of leadership was
hitherto centred on Gujarat. However, now that the Bharatiya Janata Party is
very seriously considering projecting him as a possible prime ministerial
candidate for the 2014 election, the battle over Modi’s credentials has acquired
national importance.

To gain acceptance on the national stage as a
serious claimant for the masnad of Delhi, Modi must first demonstrate his
continuing hold over his home state. To that extent, the Assembly election in
Gujarat scheduled for December this year has acquired a pan-Indian
significance. If Modi prevails for the third consecutive occasion, it is more
than likely that his burgeoning fan club will make it impossible for the BJP
leadership to deny him the top slot in the hierarchy. A defeat, on the other
hand, will reopen the leadership question in India’s premier opposition party.

In the Gujarat Assembly elections of 2002 and 2007,
the opposition to Modi was focussed on two points: his handling of the 2002
riots and the so-called alienation of the powerful Patel community. Modi was
able to brush away his opponents by invoking regional pride and, in 2007,
pointing to his achievements in governance. For the forthcoming election, his
opponents appear to have changed tack. Wiser with the knowledge that a
Modi-centric campaign actually helped the incumbent, their approach is likely
to be different.

Of course, the grievances of the Patel community are
once again likely to feature thanks to the decision of the veteran Keshubhai
Patel to forge a Third Front of sorts. However, the Congress seems to be
gearing up for a very different sort of campaign: questioning Modi’s
credentials as the new messiah of development.

Judging by the intellectual test marketing of the
new anti-Modi rhetoric, what is significant is that the old secular-communal
issue and the riots of 2002 will not feature. There appears to be recognition
in the state Congress that reopening the old wounds actually benefits Modi.
Gujarat, it would seem, is anxious to forget the 2002 nightmare for two
reasons: the lapse of a decade and a new prosperity that in turn has created an
yearning for stability and good governance.

The assault on Modi is likely to be on two issues.
First, it is being suggested that Gujarat, far from being the beacon of
development in India, has actually under-performed on crucial fronts. The claim
is that Modi’s reputation as a formidable administrator owes more to hype and
slick public relations than to hard reality.

The second point of attack is more complex and aimed
at reassuring voters that meaningful progress will continue in a post-Modi
Gujarat. The development of Gujarat, it is being said, owes nothing to Modi:
the Chief Minister has merely ridden piggyback on a pre-existing high growth
rate which owes everything to location and the entrepreneurial spirit of the Gujaratis.
Modi or no Modi, it is being said, Gujarat would have developed anyway. As
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who regards Modi as an unacceptable feature
of Indian politics, pointed out in a recent interview, there is no big deal in
developing an already developed state.

The quantum of development in Gujarat can be
measured by statistics. Using statistics culled from the Planning Commission,
Bibek Debroy has shown that Gujarat’s average growth has risen since the 1990s
but unevenly. The average growth was 6.1 per cent during the 7th
Plan (1985-1990), 12.9 per cent during the 8th Plan (1992-1997), 2.8
per cent during the 9th Plan (1997 to 2002), 10.9 per cent during
the 10th Plan (2002-2007) and an estimated 11.2 per cent during the
11th Plan (2007-2012).

What is more, the growth rate has been consistent
across sectors, including in agriculture—India’s most problematic sector. Despite
four years of drought, agriculture grew on an average by 10.7 per cent in the
period 2001-02 to 2010-11. Most significant was the rise in cotton production
from 16.8 lakh bales in 2001-02 to 104 lakh bales in 2010-2011. In the same
period, industry also grew by 10.3 per cent and services by 10.9 per cent.

Although jumping to instant political conclusions
would be rash, statistical evidence would bear out the belief that sustained
double-digit growth has coincided with Modi’s tenure as Chief Minister. Indeed,
apart from Karnataka which equalled Gujarat’s 11.2 per cent growth during the
11th Plan, none of the big states of India has equalled Gujarat’s
sustained growth over the past decade. Modi’s critics point out that Gujarat’s
growth rate has been overtaken by Bihar (which began from a zero base), Delhi
(which has a special status in Delhi) and Pondicherry. But that is like
saying—as some politicians do—that India’s faltering six per cent growth is
better than the United States’ projected two per cent growth.

The question therefore arises: is economic growth of
the kind Gujarat has witnessed over the past decade completely unrelated to
politics and governance, as Modi’s critics have maintained? If true, Modi, it
would appear, has steered political economy in an entirely new direction by
insulating economic activity from the dirty business of politics. Aspiring for
this autonomy has long been the cherished dream of the Indian corporate sector.
Are Modi’s critics crediting him for this unintended achievement?

That every state must act in tandem with the DNA of
its people is a given feature of public life. In suggesting that it is not the
job of the government to get too embroiled in business, Modi has been pursuing
the goal of minimal but focussed governance. This corresponds well with the
strong entrepreneurial instincts of Gujaratis, cutting across religions. The
question, however, remains: is entrepreneurship alone a sufficient precondition
of growth? Or, must the state act as the great facilitator of entrepreneurship
for economic growth to go beyond individual success stories and touch the
community?

In the past decade, Gujarat has focussed on the
upgradation of infrastructure, particularly roads and ports. In addition, the
Government has taken pro-active steps to attract enterprise aggressively by
laying down attractive facilities and terms. This may explain why Tata Motors
abandoned the troubled Singur in West Bengal and moved to Gujarat. And it was
the Tata decision that had a multiplier effect and contributed to the creation
of a new automobile manufacturing hub in Gujarat. Yet, none of this would have
happened had the state not established a record of low corruption, quick
decision-making and nurtured a civic culture that cherished entrepreneurship. True,
Modi played to the pre-existing strengths of Gujarat. But had the Chief
Minister been venal, unresponsive and mindlessly populist—as he so easily could
have been—would India still be talking of the Gujarat miracle?

There are many in
India who have genuine political objections to Modi. They believe, as Nitish
Kumar does, that a future Prime Minister must be seen to be more compassionate
and appreciative of the concerns of an India that can’t cope with a market
economy. There are others who say that a Prime Minister must have a more
consensual and collegiate approach. But these concerns have nothing to do with
claims that Modi is a fake.

Sunday, July 01, 2012

There were many unintended consequences of the chase
for the tenancy of Lutyens’ grand palace on Raisina Hill. The most significant
of these was the Congress Party’s public expression of faith in Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh. It is true that this happened in the strangest of
circumstances—a public ridicule of the PM by the short-lived Mamata-Mulayam
entente and the Congress’ inexplicable 14-hour silence that was broken after
persistent prodding by the PMO. But regardless of the murky gracelessness of
the occasion, the fact remains that the superannuation of Pranab Mukherjee will
also see Manmohan Singh enjoy security of tenure till May 2014.

For a PM who is naturally concerned about what
legacy he leaves behind after two terms in office, this peace of mind is of
utmost importance. No individual in a position of importance can be expected to
perform if he is dogged by constant uncertainty of tenure—as Manmohan certainly
was until, fortuitously, the voters of UP decided earlier this year that the
designated successor wasn’t quite up to scratch. Now, the question is: what is
the PM going to do with this 20-month window of opportunity?

The PM told the nation last Independence Day that he
doesn’t possess a “magic wand”. Unfortunately for him, this is precisely what a
large section of India hopes he has. With President-designate Mukherjee having
bequeathed to him an economy in near-shambles, public expectations from the PM
have reached dizzying heights. Corporate India wants him to restore the GDP to
an acceptable level, his party wants him to create a political terrain that
will allow the UPA to make a fight of the 2014 election, and ordinary people
want a return of purposeful governance.

The national charter of demands from the PM is daunting.
What is even more troubling is that that the repair job doesn’t merely call for
technocratic expertise; it necessitates political clout. The likes of Montek
Singh Ahluwalia and C. Rangarajan, the Praetorian Guards of the PM, believe
that a restoration of global confidence in India coupled with a booster dose of
‘reforms’ will see the country back on track. Their implicit message over the
past few weeks is simple: have faith in the PM and leave it to the experts.

It is not a reassuring message. Among the main
reasons why the mere existence of a crisis was denied till the Rupee went into
a free fall six weeks ago and the ratings agencies started publishing adverse
reports, was that the Government was itself confused over its priorities.
Should it play to the galleries and enlarge the scope of entitlements, or
should it attend to issues such as the fiscal deficit, investor confidence and
the GDP? What is interesting is that in the face of severe hiccups, the
Congress has failed to engage with these choices politically. The urgency and
clear-headed ruthlessness it has shown in matters affecting its very survival
and the reputation of Sonia Gandhi have not been replicated in any project to
extricate the economy from its present made-in-India crisis.

The result is all too visible: the PM doesn’t have
any clear political mandate for attending to the economic mismanagement. What
is even worse is that he has not felt it necessary to seek this mandate from
his party. Consequently, governance has degenerated into a one-step-forward,
two-steps-backward exercise. No wonder there has been a mushrooming of
committees, the time-tested recipe for prevarication. Even on a clear-cut issue
as the contentious GAAR, the bureaucracy has been able to stall a quick
confidence-building step.

But why blame the babus? The paralysis in governance
can also be attributed to the regime’s low integrity quotient. With corruption
clouds hovering over too many senior ministers, there is systemic reluctance to
undertake steps that short-circuit an exhaustive due diligence process. Ironically,
the pressures for greater transparency and accountability have ended up slowing
down the wheels of government at a time when rapid response is imperative.

The situation demands
two developments: an end to the political logjam through a clear popular
mandate, and the leadership of an ‘outsider’ dedicated to brushing away the
accumulated cobwebs from government. Sadly, Manmohan is too much of a creature
of a plodding system.

About Me

The Right is an endangered community in India's English-language media. I happen to be one of the few to have retained a precarious toehold in the mainstream media. I intend this blog as a sounding board of ideas and concerns.
You can read the details of my education, professional experience and political inclinations on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swapan_Dasgupta).
RIGHT ANGLE is an archive of my published articles. USUAL SUSPECTS is my blog.